Forged in the crucible of turntablist Mariam Rezaei’s November 2023 residency at London’s Café Oto, The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters is an incendiary new quartet. Their punk approach to free improvisation draws on elements of jazz, noise, hip-hop, techno and new music to create a thrilling sonic maelstrom that is beyond category or convention.

THE SLEEP OF REASON PRODUCES MONSTERS:
MARIAM REZAEI – METTE RASMUSSEN – GABRIELE MITELLI – LUKAS KOENIG (UK/DK/IT/AT)

Rezaei scratches diverse samples – Iranian vocoder melodies, doom guitar riffs, wailing saxophones, torrential drums – into ecstatic new forms, Gabriele Mitelli blows a wild trumpet, wrangles his noise boxes and hollers cosmic chants. Mette Rasmussen plays with her characteristic blend of ferocity and precision, jousting with Rezaei and Mitelli while surfing Lukas Koenig’s waves of breakbeats, heavy metal thunder and free jazz abstraction. It’s a thrilling example of where experimental music is at right now, as creative musicians from diverse backgrounds build a world beyond genre. The first release of TSORPM is planned for January, hopefully just in time for the exclusive passage at De Studio.

“ … They’re a monster party band with a sense of total having it, a raucous and rapacious bricolage of jazz history and arty ideas in a mad bundle of vital chaotic energy.” AJ Dehany, London Jazz